Then swiftly, silently, the leap is made.

It is a danger unavoidable, terrible, ever-present.

Thorpe was destined in time to see men crushed and mangled in a hundred ingenious ways by the saw log, knocked into space and a violent death by the butts of trees, ground to powder in the mill of a jam, but never would he be more deeply impressed than by this ruthless silent taking of a life.

The forces of nature are so tame, so simple, so obedient; and in the next instant so absolutely beyond human control or direction, so whirlingly contemptuous of puny human effort, that in time the wilderness shrouds itself to our eyes in the same impenetrable mystery as the sea.
That evening the camp was unusually quiet.

Tellier let his fiddle hang.
After supper Thorpe was approached by Purdy, the reptilian red-head with whom he had had the row some evenings before.
"You in, chummy ?" he asked in a quiet voice.